


The Closest of Stars

by royalblues



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Christmas, College AU, Depression, Fluff, Ice-Skating, Mental Illness, Stars, drugs (experimenting and prescription), implicit sexual content, this is not plotless goop but its def fluffier than what i usually write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-26
Updated: 2014-12-26
Packaged: 2018-03-03 18:02:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2859956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royalblues/pseuds/royalblues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hello, this is your Captain, God, speaking. Ryan Ross, Creative Writing Major suffering from depression and a Metaphor-addiction, with a family of one and a half people and no friends left, I want you to meet Brendon Urie: the idiot who crashes through your roof window and leaves your sad little life lit up like a Christmas tree.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Closest of Stars

**Author's Note:**

> Was supposed to be a present for my friend, who rejected reading it, so I'm posting it here instead. This is not romanticizing of mental illness. This is not a true-love-conquers-all solution, because such a thing does not exist, except for maybe at Christmas. So this is nothing but a (modernized) Christmas fairytale. Happy Holidays <3

**(prologue)**

 

It was the 30th of August 1994 when a shooting fragment of the star HD 36045 crashed down upon Ryan Ross' school and killed nine people. The news reporters were all over the case like flies buzzing around a corpse and they covered the story for days, weeks even.

It was the 30th of August 1994, the day Ryan Ross turned eight years old, and no one except his parents bothered to congratulate him. Even his father forgot until Ryan's mother reminded him, but that was only because work stressed out George Ross and kept him at the office overnight five of seven days a week, _you know that, honey, you're a big boy now_. George took medication for his stress, little blue and yellow pills after every evening meal, ones that gave him heartburn and made him cuss at the television and ignore his wife and son.

The two events were not at all correlated – Ryan wished for a friend, not a wrecked playground at his school – but somehow the crash was Ryan's fault and he felt drawn to the site. A week after it had happened his mom tied his shoes and brought him with her on her excursion to the grocery store near the school. Ryan could see the enormous star and the banks of dirt bunched up around it. It was nothing special; it did not shimmer or sparkle in the afternoon sun. In fact its brown surface looked just like a boulder, and, if you squinted, kind of like a huge meatball.

“Stay here,” Ryan's mom admonished, “I'll be back in twenty minutes.”

After thirty she had not yet returned. Ryan ambled toward the two broken halves of the swing-set and the rusty carrousel. School had been closed for the summer and was kept closed for a month after the crash so meteorologists and astronomers could gather swaps and examine matter from the star. The only part of the playground the star had not completely annihilated was the tree-house. Ryan's skinny legs itched to carry him to the top, his arms already burning from the imagined exertion of pulling up his own body by his arms, and oh, he wanted so badly to hide in the shade of the tree house.

An hour passed and Danielle Ross had not yet returned from her shopping. Boredom was driving her son mad with a suppressed craving for adventure, so he slipped underneath the yellow 'caution' tape and toward the tree house.

Inch by inch he hauled himself up only to nearly slip off the rope ladder. The house was not empty, and everywhere the comic books had been strewn across the floor. A dark haired boy was sitting in their midst, tearing out pages and folding up paper planes.

“Hi,” said the strange child. “Do you live here?”

“No one lives here,” said Ryan. “It's a tree house.”

“So?”

“So no one lives here. It's for public use by pupils.”

“I wouldn't mind living here,” he said.

“But there's no bed.”

“There's comics and cushions. A floor under you, a roof over you.”

Ryan frowned and shifted closer to the boy tearing up page after page of _The Amazing Spiderman_. It was one of the newer issues, one Ryan had yet to read – not that he was some kind of nerd, but sometimes being in the tree house was nice because his parents weren't there.

The boy surveyed Ryan with an apprehensive curiosity. “What's your name?”

Ryan should exit the tree house and find his mom. She was probably calling for him right this moment and when she found him, she would slap him on the back and tell him not to wander away like that again. But the playground was silent, and nobody had come out of the grocery store for all the time Ryan had been in the house; he could see that through the window.

“Ryan,” said Ryan. Then, “I don't know you. You don't go here. What school do you attend?”

“I don't go to school.” The boy discarded the _Spiderman_ comic and flopped to the floor of the tree house, hands supporting his chin and legs dangling behind him. His eyes shone like he was on the brink of tears but he smiled, a big toothy seven year old grin like he'd never known the smallest sting of pain in his life.

“What do you do? Are you homeschooled?”

“No,” said the strange kid, still smiling.

“What about your parents?”

“I haven't seen them in a while. But that's okay, really. I don't need them.”

Ryan sneaked a glance at the figure perched atop a pillow to his right, still flipping through comics with an almost stoic expression like he was completing a severe task, a matter of national security resting in the hands of this eight year old boy. He looked nothing like one of the homeless kids, the ones who wandered The Strip with a paper cup in hand and a forlorn look on their faces, dirt smeared across their foreheads, trying to lure money from tourists they could share with their financially supported parents. He wore a t-shirt and a pair of shorts and his hair looked like he hadn't washed it in a while, but otherwise he appeared physically healthy.

“Did you want to read this?”

Ryan scooted closer to the comic. He had yet to read that issue, not that he wanted to; the comics were mostly a mean of passing time, but the strange company perplexed him and stunned him to an awed silence, so he lay down and read with the other boy instead.

 

When they finished the comic, Ryan's mom still had not come out from the grocery store. Ryan had not heard her call for him, and the sun had sunk in the sky enough to remind him of dinner or bed-time. His mom had spent an unusual amount of time in the store.

“I should go,” he said.

“Are you coming back?”

“Probably not. I don't know when school opens again.”

“That won't happen,” said the stranger with a certainty in his voice like he knew not only this, but everything else in the universe. “The damage is too comprehensive. The school will shut down.”

Ryan had never heard any kid his age use a word like comprehensive, but somehow it fit. Hesitating at the opening in the house, he called that he might return tomorrow, fully well knowing he wouldn't, just so the other would not be too sad. He had to go home at some point, right?

“You're lying,” it came in the same cheerful tone the kid had used all afternoon. “But that's okay. My parents are probably coming for me soon. They're just buying dinner. I think we're gonna have lasagna.”

Ryan shuddered in the warm September twilight. The last thing he saw was the darkened back of the other's head, bowed above a comic book, his small hand waving in clumsy motions behind him.

 

Ryan stumbled down from the ladder and fell to the ground. A sharp pain tore across his knee and he looked down to spot a bloody flint stone or a piece of the star sticking out from it. A short, fat wound ran vertically down his knee, dripping blood from torn tissue. He bit back tears and brushed the grazed-up skin on his palms on his pants. It burned, but not as much as the look of the closed grocery door. The store had been closed for an hour, and his mom was nowhere to see. She probably walked home without him, Ryan thought, and began his own journey. Tears dripped on the pavement below him, although the pain wasn't so much from his injuries as it stemmed from an eerie knowledge that bad things would happen. As if meeting some stranger's leftover child was an omen for everything that would go wrong with his life from that point onward.

 

Ryan's mother never came home from the grocery store. Ryan and his dad were a family of two then, or of one and a half as Ryan's father liked to say. “We ain't even two whole people,” he was telling Ryan over the dinner table for the few days where he did manage to cook up something edible. The rest of the time he was crying into his work briefcase and, when Ryan noticed, pretending he was not.

Two weeks later Ryan and his dad received a letter from his school that stated “unfortunately the damage of the star is too comprehensive and the school will be closed for renovations. You will have to enroll your child in another program until the renovations are finished.”

A month later Ryan started a new school and met Spencer, who became his friend. Ryan believed his birthday wish has been filled.

 

 

**(crash)**

 

 

It is the 5th of November 2007 when a hand crashes through Ryan Ross' roof window followed by yelps and an agonized scream of pain. Ryan is sitting in his chair, minding his own business, not writing his paper.

Luckily for the person on his roof, Ryan is too exhausted to get up and switch the record that has been playing for the past hour, and now the only sound in the living room is of his own heavy breathing. That is, until the curses come from the sloped roof window, half concealed in a niche.

Then come the words, small and fragile: “I think I'm bleeding.”

“You think? You're dripping on my carpet. What the hell were you doing up there?”

“Watching the stars, I was just, fuck, I'm dizzy, can you help me down?”

“Pull out your arm. I'll open the window and you can try to squeeze in.”

With a week groan, they wriggle their arm free of the glass shards. A few red-matted ones lands on the carpet, and Ryan tries not to think about the cost of getting that window repaired, not to mention his landlord's reaction. No way can he smuggle a glazier up to the 12th floor without anybody noticing.

“All right, come on. Watch the glass.”

They crawl through then, bare feet first that land an inch next to the biggest shard of glass. They bend their knees, reveal themself to be a guy. Then comes a t-shirt-clad torso and the bare arms, one of them red and full of deep cuts. Blood still drips from most of them, the iron-scent curling into Ryan's nostrils and brain. He registers the severity of the situation, then a brief flash of confusion at the cold wind whistling through the open window. Bare arms, bare feet, the face contorted in a failed attempt to hide pain.

“Please say you have a car,” the stranger groans. “I need a doctor.”

 

 

 

Ryan thought he would be spending this Tuesday evening reading his library novel, which is due in three days, but he has yet to finish it because of spending so much time cooped up in his bed, not reading his books, not completing his uni work, not calling Spencer or his doctor.

Instead he is driving a crazy bleeding stranger to the hospital in his worn out Volkswagen.

Clearing his throat, he clutches the steering wheel more tightly and speaks: “There's a couple of things we need to get straight, okay? I'm driving you to the hospital and I'm staying until I'm sure you won't bleed to death, but this was not my fault and _you're_ paying for the damages. To my window, I mean. I hope your insurance covers that arm if it turns out defective.”

“I know, I will.”

They stop at a red light, allowing Ryan a few seconds to look at his passenger. His eyes are closed, pink lips chapped and parted, his breathing coming out between them in shallow pants. He's pale, paler than anyone Ryan had ever seen, but his teint probably stems from the loss of blood. The light turns green and Ryan tears away his eyes.

 _I will be home in a few hours, I will be home in a few hours, I will be home in a few hours,_ he repeats to himself.

“We're there soon,” he says, not knowing what else to supply his passenger with, more worried about his car interior than this idiot who was crawling across the roof at eleven in the evening.

 

 

Tuesday night turns to Wednesday morning as Ryan sits in the emergency room and watches a Doctor Bhandari remove the 11th glass shard from the stranger, whose name, Ryan has come to learn, is Brendon Urie. The doctor has asked the question that Ryan was too tired to, and now that he knows, he has a label for the idiot who crashed through his window. _Brendon Urie, the idiot who crashed through my window. Of all the windows to crash into he picked mine, of all the nights to crawl around on that roof, he picked tonight._ This is one of those stories he can tell Spencer when he asks how Ryan's week has been, when he calls next Sunday to check in on Ryan and see if Ryan has gone outside. Does the hospital count? Sometimes Spencer forgets to call anyway.

“You're lucky the glass didn't sever any major arteries,” Doctor Bhandari says. “I'm going to have to suture two of these, though, to make sure they heal properly. How did this happen?”

“Yeah, I'd like to know that, too,” Ryan mutters. “He just fell through my window. I have no idea who he is.”

“I was looking at the stars,” says Brendon. Nothing else. It's a reasonable explanation, although somewhat unbelievable. He could have been setting up a bomb or surveillance gear. He could have been spying on the girl in 45D, who often liked to put on shows as she shed her clothes for bed. “Didn't notice I had sat on a window. Really, it could happen to anyone.”

 

 

“Where do you live?”

“Um, apartment 32F, it's on the adjoining length of the building, you know, the one...” he gestures vaguely with his hand.

“Can you manage for tonight?”

Brendon's voice has regained some strength, and as they park outside the apartment complex, he sounds almost as if he hasn't lost a decent amount of blood, now soaked up by Ryan's shag-haired carpet. His mouth quirks up; you could mistake the movement for a tic, a mere reaction to the biting wind and the pricking hail that ricochets from the sky. If Ryan counts back enough years, he might recall a time when someone other than Spencer smiled at him that way. He never knew he missed it until this moment; the moment where you first see someone smile and decide if you like it or not, even if they're just an idiot who crashed through your window.

“Thanks. I appreciate the ride and stuff. I'm sorry about your window, I'll pay you back as soon as possible – you live in 42G, right? Your door sign says Ryan Ross. I guess that's your name. I'll just – I'll stop by later with the money. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Ryan mumbles, not looking back at the figure shuffling off to entrance F of the building. He concentrates on the hours left until his morning class, six and a half, on the amount of sleep he will not get.

 

...

 

The glazier announces that another two days may pass between the delivery of Ryan's new window-glass. “It'll be 450 dollars,” he says, and Ryan nods although the other man can't tell over the phone. He wants the phone call over and done with. In the meantime he has hung up a plaid over the gaping hole in his roof. It darkens the apartment now that light only shines through the other small window, and so Ryan has the dark as an excuse for why he never reads any of the sources supposed to support his paper. The library has mailed him a letter demanding their book back, and he is considering whether or not it would be worth the effort to get up, put on his jacket and drive across town to deposit it.

“Are you home?” The voice comes from the niche behind the plaid, giving Ryan the last snippet of motivation he needs to unfold himself from the confines of his armchair.

“Who is this?”

“You said you wanted me to pay for the window reparations.”

 _Oh, right._ Ryan undoes two of the corners of the blanket from their corners of the window and lets it hang by the others.

Brendon is squatting right outside on the sill, his hands braced on either side of the roof window.

“Should this cover it?” He lets go with one hand to to reach out a bundle of bills so crisp and fresh, you can smell the printing ink on them still. Ryan by eyesight estimates them to account for at least five hundred dollars.

Apprehensive, he stuffs them in his inner pocket. “Why didn't you use my front door?”

“Oh, I was up here anyway. Thought I'd stop by.”

“If you're looking at stars, why not use your own roof?”

“It doesn't have any windows because there aren't any apartments in the loft. Just storage space. You wanna join me?”

Ryan's brain says no; it lists all the reasons for why he should stay inside, finish his paper, begin his paper, why does he have to go sit on a cold roof with some stranger anyway. But his mouth disobeys and says, “why not?”

The beaming, glorious smile Brendon flashes him could supply the whole city with power for a week.

In the kitchen Ryan finds a towel, which he drapes over the glass shards before he pulls over the tallest of his two kitchen chairs to stand on. Even with the height of the furniture and himself, Brendon still has to aid him in his clumsy escape and pull him onto the roof.

In a few hours the night frost will turn the tiles to a veritable ice rink, a trap maze of which and which tiles you cannot step on, but Ryan, who has no experience with climbing on the roof even in calm weather, is wobbling like a slinky trying to manage the ten steps to his neighbor's (intact) window. Brendon has to stabilize him by the waist; it's uncomfortable having someone that close when you don't know them and Ryan is beginning to regret the arrangement.

“So, this is nice,” Ryan says when they have sat on the roof for ten minutes without speaking.

“Yeah, isn't it? Ridiculously entertaining when you can't afford cable.”

Ryan side-eyes him to see if he's kidding, but Brendon, in all seriousness, is sitting crosslegged and tapping out a rhythm on the glass before him.

Instead of replying, he asks “how often do you come out here?”

“A lot.”

Silence. Ryan's neighbor, Jon, is practicing on his bass again and the low rhythm can almost be felt through the roof. They can see him through the window, too, sitting on his bed with his cat on the pillow and a notebook to his left.

“Why do you do it?”

“Makes me feel better, I guess. More at ease. You ever feel like you don't really belong in your own apartment? Or body? And you feel more connected to something entirely different than the human race was supposed to connect with, like stars or animals or art, or toast bread, what do I know.”

Ryan shakes his head. He hasn't really, but that doesn't mean Brendon made no sense. “You mean like God?”

“No, nothing religious. I mean, fine if you believe in Buddha or Jesus or Santa Claus, but that's not what I meant. I don't know how to explain it. The stars just calm me down, the knowledge that they exist. No matter what else happens, how unstable your life is, if you get fired, if your landlord throws you out and your partner breaks up with you, you can always know for certain that the stars are up there. You can't just wake up in the middle of the night and they're gone and the sky is dark and you don't know when they're coming back.”

Ryan hasn't thought of his mom in ten years, but something in Brendon's speech strikes up an image of her, as if a shivering, dying light illuminated one last memory of her like in that Christmas story with the girl and the matchsticks. The last “I won't be long” before she enters a random grocery store in a random city and never exits it again.

“I guess that's true...”

“I _know_ it's true. Science proves it. Their existence at least, not their purpose.”

“Let me guess, you study philosophy.”

“Almost, but not at all. Astronomy at Blanchard.”

Ryan nods. “Didn't know they offered an astronomy major.”

“It's new, they established it two years ago. You're Oakland right?”

Again, Ryan nods. “Creative Writing major. It's easy,” he adds because he has nothing to hold up against Brendon's impressive astronomy major. Ryan chose his own because of the abundance of writing and the lack of logical thinking. You just have to punch something out the back of your brain, or pull it out of your ass or scrape it off the week-old dirty dishes in your sink. The professors love it. “So creative,” they say, “your insight is tremendous,” although the oldest of them can't possibly have read a new angle on anything in a decade. But there's no math or paragraph-length formulas. You can bullshit your way out of everything, you can bullshit your way out of even showing up and participating.

“You okay there?” Brendon nudges him.

“Fine. How's your arm.”

“Fully functional.” He wiggles his fingers in front of himself, playing an imaginary piano. The stitches still stands out like black centipedes when his muscles ripple with movement, and Ryan stares, mesmerized.

“You're still an idiot.” He isn't sure where the words come from; he has never been so rude to someone he know so little about, but Brendon grins and nods eagerly.

“Absolutely,” he agrees.

“Aren't you supposed to be offended?”

“Then tell me something offensive.”

His face is too close, expecting a reaction other than “uh, I have to go,” which is what comes to Ryan's mind the quickest. He can count all of Brendon's lashes if he wants to, and part of him does want that, so he looks away and strings up a joke, something he overheard before the last lecture he attended. “So, three pregnant women are sitting in a doctor's waiting room, knitting. The first one checks her watch and takes a pill. She says, “Vitamin C: good for mom, good for baby.” The second mom takes a pill and says, “Vitamin A: good for mom, good for baby.””

“What about the third mom?” Brendon asks. He's far too enthralled by the joke, as if it was actually an interesting story, and his brown, brown eyes are gobbling up the words or Ryan's face; either is pretty creepy.

Ryan continues: “and the third mom, she takes a pill and says, “Thalidomide... I can't knit sleeves.”

For a moment Brendon just looks shocked, but then he starts laughing, giggling so much that he almost falls off the top window ledge and has to hold on to Ryan's arm. To Ryan the joke is not that funny; the girl who told it is one of those authors who crams pills and metaphors into their books and themselves like they're plural nouns or candy, which she doesn't eat much of at all, and when she does, she always sneaks off to the university bathroom. But Brendon, who seems so unlike her, finds it funny, too. His breath is warming Ryan's skin through his shirt, so Ryan lets him hold on until the giggle fit subsides.

“You are so strange, do you know that?” Ryan says, low enough that he hopes it evades Brendon's hearing.

“You need more strange in your life.”

For too long they sit on the roof, exchanging inappropriate jokes, Brendon telling Ryan exactly what he needs of strange things in his life “Me,” for example. “And weirder lamps in your apartment; you only have light bulbs.”

Ryan doesn't tell him that he needs the dark, because without it he's just a sad college student in a furnished apartment. At least without lamp shades he fulfills the struggling writer stereotype, which is sad, but a comforting role to play at least. _Ryan Ross, Struggling Author,_ sounds a lot better than _Ryan Ross, Purposeless Piece of Shit_.

 

 

As the smell of dinner rises from Jon Walker's apartment, Ryan's stomach growls. His cabinets contain nothing but dry pasta and ketchup, while Jon seems to be cooking up some kind of Indian curry dish that makes his mouth water.

“My ass is freezing off, we better get home,” Brendon says.

“Sure. Are you coming up here tomorrow?”

“If you want me to,” says Brendon, smiling.

 

 

Ryan lets him climb in through his window and out of his door, embarrassed by his messy apartment. Brendon trips over a pair of boots on his way out and has to brace himself against the wall. He turns on the lights for Ryan, then waves and grins and leaves, leaves Ryan with a weird, fuzzy feeling in his limbs. Then he shakes it off and turns off the lights. He hasn't eaten all day; hasn't really felt hunger until now, but he must eat _something_.

There are no clean pots left, so after one glance at the pasta in the cupboards and the dishes in the sink, he begins scrubbing a pan, then another and another until he can see the color of the sink again.

 

 

**(crush)**

 

 

 

It is the 9th of November, it is the 10th and the 11th and the rest of the month, even after the glazier has fixed the glass. Every late afternoon before dinner time Brendon knocks on the glass and asks Ryan to come out on the roof, until the day he no longer has to ask.

On their second roof-night, the sky is pale and pink and Brendon asks what Ryan's favorite candy is. He promises to bring a bag, because clearly he has money and not much to spend them on. The crisp bills are still freshly imprinted in Ryan's memory, but he dares not yet ask about them, how it seemed like Brendon either robbed a bank or never spends money on anything, never touches all those bills. Instead Ryan asks, “what's yours?”

Brendon leans closer, his cold breath washing over Ryan's face. He pokes the tip of Ryan's nose with an un-gloved finger and says “you.”

“You're crazy,” Ryan returns.

Brendon pouts; the sparkle in his eyes dies down. “Aw, hey, don't call me that.”

Silence grips Ryan, shakes him. His brain begins to list things that he could say to make up for his outburst, and part of him is buzzing alive, some kind of shitty sentiment that needs to patch things up. Until now he thought it was defective; that his emotions didn't work; that part of him was broken and that was why he spent so many years eating too many pills and too many metaphors.

The moon is up, the stars are sparkling and Brendon says he has coursework for college to do. He leaves without a word.

 

...

 

On the third night, Brendon asks about Ryan's parents and the sky is a dark, almost alpine green from the canopy of regret that hangs over them.

“Mom left when I was seven. She was grocery shopping and never returned from the store. I was too busy reading superhero cartoons to notice she disappeared. What about yours?”

Brendon says that his parents are dead. D-E-A-D. “Like Thanksgiving turkeys and flowers in winter and your eyes before we met; they are _that_ dead. Buried forty feet below in two caskets. Are you happy, Ryan?”

Ryan says he stopped taking pills, but no, he isn't happy.

“I wish I could make you happy.” Brendon's voice is small and he is hugging his knees like a kid. He's wearing ripped jeans and a t-shirt and the snowflakes adhere to his bare arms in so many places, they look like giant white freckles. Brendon looks like a child who doesn't know how to dress himself properly.

Ryan thinks, _I wish you could, too._

 

...

 

On the fifth night, Ryan tells Brendon about his childhood and about how he never talks to Spencer anymore, because Spencer got tired of participating in a friendship with a zombie and left. One day he stopped calling and asking, stopped pretending he cared.

 

...

 

On the tenth, Brendon says his parents aren't really dead. They just act like he doesn't exist. Ryan says, “that's the same with my dad. I act like he doesn't exist. He stopped sending Christmas cards two years ago.”

Brendon says, “I can be your new family. You can be mine or whatever.”

 

...

 

On night number eleven Brendon isn't there, even though Ryan sits by himself and waits for hours and hours. Grey cotton clouds have gathered and shield the stars. Maybe that's why he isn't here; because without the stars there is no reason to look at the sky. Ryan thinks about calling him, but Brendon says that doesn't have a cellphone. Ryan tells himself to worry, but he can't bring himself to do it.

 

 

Brendon doesn't show up for a week.

 

 

On the 19th night on the roof, Ryan crumbles one of his lists up, the thirteenth copy he has written instead of turning in his latest paper. He looks at the first and second lines and rambles, so the words do not remain in the air like their frosty breaths. He rambles, “you're vivid, strange and wonderful, affectionate, you're –”

he says, “you're a star, do you know that?”

“I _am_ ,” Brendon says. There is no humor in his eyes, only depths and depths of bliss. “Fell down to earth like David Bowie in that movie and now I'm searching for true love. I think I've found it now, though.”

Ryan laughs softly and catches a snowflake with his index finger. For some reason it doesn't melt, not until he guides it to the tip of Brendon's nose and places it there.

Brendon tilts his head onto Ryan's shoulder and buries himself in the woolen scarf. He never wears scarves or gloves or socks, yet he's never cold and when Ryan's hand in his own fingerless glove find Brendon's between them, it's warm and dry and soft.

“Is it too early to say “I love you?””

Ryan's heart is stomping up and down on his stomach. He squeezes Brendon's hand. Hard, too hard. “Who decides that anyway?”

“I think they've made it up,” Brendon says tonelessly. “That there's a right time to say things. All the movies and the books and stuff; they wanna be so special but what's special about things that are never used? They're just ornaments, and isn't that when things lose meaning? Not when you say them. The government made it up so we don't speak our minds about anything, not even our friends. I wanna say it all the time, wanna sing it from the rooftop – we're on a rooftop right now, it's perfect, actually.”

And so he wobbles to his feet, and Ryan notices he isn't wearing socks again, right before he belts out “Ryan Ross, I love you, Ryan is a weirdo, tra-la-la-la-la, Ryan Ross, I love you, but you can't afford glass repair w– whoops, help –”

Ryan grips Brendon's legs and tells him to shut up before he falls down. They really have only known each other for a month, and Brendon first and foremost occupies the role as the idiot who crashed through Ryan's window. Ryan doesn't know if he loves him.

Brendon says, “Tomorrow we should do something else. I've always wanted to go to figure skating at the ice-rink, what about you?”

They agree to figure-skate the following evening in their usual time, then part as usual. Ryan returns straight to his desk and types out a six page essay about why “I love you” needs to be said every day, even if you have no one to say it to.

 

His professor gives him a B.

 

 

 **(c** **ouple** **)**

 

 

It is the beginning of December and Ryan has lost count of the days. His doctor has prescribed him _Zoloft_ , despite the almost full package already in his lowest bathroom drawer. Often, two months ago, Ryan would open and close the closet multiple times a day. Just to see if the pills (read: the opportunity) were still there, not swiped away in a late-night fit of optimism, of “I can do this on my own! I don't need medication.” Lately the urge has faded, from a deep burning itch to a faint reminder, like the greasiness of his hair reminding him that he must wash it before entering the public eye, or at least reminding him to pull on a beanie and a scarf.

It always looked so fake to him, too, to watch his own reflection stare gloomily back from inside a grimy, toothpaste-speckled mirror. Bags under his eyes so thick and dark, they look like smudged eyeliner. Frizzy hair the color of a secretary who has lost all hope about a future career up there along the CEOs. Ryan Ross looks like one of those commercials for medication – _is_ your _child a depressed maniac? Fear not, there is hope! Just take ten milligrams of_ Happiness _with breakfast and dinner, and they'll be prancing out the door and falling headfirst into puddles again sooner than you know it!_ Then cut to a scene of the previously desolate emo child jumping through skipping-ropes with carnations in their hair and watermelon smiles on their faces.

He's on a roll with these metaphors. No, he is floating on a tidal wave of metaphors, trapped in a tower from which he can only escape by climbing down yards and yards of twisted syntax-ivy.

 

...

 

Brendon calls him a bit before six that evening, says he wants to go ice-skating and hopefully Ryan hasn't forgotten. “Please?”

Ryan thinks that he should tell Brendon that he is not a Happy jump-rope skipping child. If he cancels on this ice-skating bullshit, he can stay at home. Watch marathons of _Cheers_ alone with a bottle of wine and sing along to the theme song while he pukes onto his own carpet. He can pretend he will be writing his thesis and instead jack off to sad softcore porn. Try his best to turn off the flickering images of being pressed up close against Brendon, of butterfly-kissing Brendon's stomach and thighs, and eating Brendon out until an orgasm convulses him and he comes so hard, he'll scream and knock his head into the wall and wake up Ryan's old, semi-deaf neighbor.

Three weeks remain until Christmas eve and Ryan is thinking about not eating dinner and not getting presents and being a miserable, content Piece of Shit alone. The imagery competes with a faint memory of Brendon humming _Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas_ , lying on his stomach on Ryan's bed, flipping through a book about literary tropes.

“Ryan? Are we still on?”

“Yeah,” Ryan says, unsure if the words are a lie. “I'll be there.”

 

He still doesn't know whether or not he's lying. Small streets or dim dead-ends pop up everywhere, calling “sleep in us, sleep with us, we bring cold cold comfort and the final solution you're too cowardly to seek on your own.” Brightly lit bars and pubs with peanuts and cheap water-y beer, calling “You don't have to live up to us, you don't have to be anything for us, come here and sit down for a bit.” Drawing his collar up and striding against the win, he ignores their warmth and comfort in favor of the small skating rink two hundred feet ahead.

Not until he spots Brendon under a streetlight with his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of a summer-coat, does the lie come true. _I do want to be here, I do want to hold your hand just to marvel at why it's never cold._

“Hi,” sighs Brendon and blows warm, sticky candy breath into Ryan's face. Wraps his arms around Ryan and spins them both around as though they didn't meet yesterday. “Have you slept at all? You look like hell.”

To complete the metaphor, Ryan says: “and you look like heaven,” if heaven is a guy with dark, dark eyes squinted as a beaming grin cracks his face. If heaven is a bare hand curled around a candied apple, whose coconut flakes drizzle to the earth like snow. If heaven is the moron who fell through a window and managed to spark up a relationship with the owner of said window.

And together they constitute Couple Purgatory along with tired High School Sweethearts and Apple-cheeked Lovers, carving in the ice eternal eights to symbolize their everlasting love.

Ryan memorizes and tucks away the metaphors for later essay uses.

 

A sour-looking man slings two pairs of skates across the disk and stuffs Brendon's cash into a shabby checkered shirt. As Ryan slips on the frosty pavement, you hear this man's guffaw break through the Christmas tunes that pour from over-dimensioned speakers hidden on the square.

With rigid fingers Ryan manages to put on the right boot; Brendon watching and twirling around at the rim of the rink, skates already laced to his feet. “C'mon, they close at nine.”

Ryan wobbles the ten steps to the skating rink. A rush of terror surges through him as he first steps foot on ice and slips, one two three feet with no one to catch him and it's starting to feel like walking home alone from the grocery store, sliding off the roof right before an arm lashes out to catch him. “Watch it, Bambi,” Brendon laughs. “Don't wanna hurt yourself, do you?”

 

He betters as time progresses – not by much, but at least he no longer falls on his ass and scratch open his palm on the rough surface of the ice. He skates around the rink and across the rink, but mostly he watches Brendon twirl and etch figure eights into the already scratched-up ice. Watches Brendon attempt to spell “Ryan”, which turns out more like “Ryrr” due to a collision with a skating expert of a whole nine years, teddy bear still stuffed in the gap between her torso and arm.

Brendon twirls around the girl in elegant motions, and she laughs toward the sky until her hat falls off, revealing a bare head. Her mother rushes to the rescue, politely smiling at Brendon, who's too young to be a predator, but her daughter is so fragile even the snowflakes could hurt her.

And Ryan stands at the sideline, smiling, satisfied. Christmas-y. Relieved he didn't stay at home, relieved no car ran him over on his way there.

The thought has not yet reached its morbid end before Brendon twirls Ryan around the same way he did the girl, who's laughing even more at the sight of Ryan's wobbling, bending body struggling to keep up with the ice underneath him. His skates must have a loose blade or something, but he grins back at her, and her mother on whose face a cautious smile appears. With Ryan's attention elsewhere, the ice seizes the moment to turn – impossibly – even more slippery underneath him. He falls on his ass and both Brendon, the skate-rink owner, the girl and her mother dissolve into laughter.

 

Nine strikes and the owner of the place guides the last children out of the rink, gruff as ever, and completely unconcerned with the pleas and cries of the girl who never wants to leave and return to her home of dusty illness. Ryan understands her perfectly. The rink closes at nine pm, and not a minute later, says the owner. Nine in the evening: coincidentally the same time Brendon says he must go home.

They're standing underneath a lamppost. Small snowflakes drift into their faces with the ferocity of feathers. “I think I really do like you,” he says, “I do.” He presses his lips to Ryan's, lighter than the snowflakes, sweeter than his candied apple. His hands skim down Ryan's back; Ryan senses them through his coat. He's sighing into Brendon, melting into him like the smallest of snowflakes, feeling just as small.

The kiss lasts until the owner of the rink coughs and reminds them to return their skates and return tomorrow if they want another go.

Ryan blushes and glances over his shoulder where a group of teenagers has gathered, whispering. He swallows the lump in his throat, admits, “I like you, too,” and the words taste awfully fake. What he really wants to say is _I love you_ but the teenagers are staring and pointing and stuffing into their mouths ripped pieces of cotton candy. And it's too early anyway, right?

Before he can pull himself together, Brendon is hurrying off, the imprint of his mouth lingering far longer than his physical presence. “Gotta go, see you tomorrow?” he calls over his shoulder, coat and Ryan's scarf in a woolen flurry after him.

 _Where_ , Ryan wants to call, _when?_ , but the snow has resumed its falling and the slushy globs might wash Brendon right out of his mouth if he opens it.

He walks home alone in it. With vehement force the cold fires a barrage of hail at his all-year-round coat, although his insides feel like an Indian summer, his lips like scorching flames each time he wets them.

 

...

 

Brendon and Ryan are a Couple now. They go to the Skating Rink and buy Candied Apples and Borrow Each Other's Clothes (Brendon scarves, Ryan gloves that he only fits into if he snips off the fingers). They cook dinner together but Brendon never ever stays the night. He gives the greatest head of Ryan's life and looks up through his lashes with blissed-out glossy eyes and says “I love you” and it never ever wears out like you'd think it would. He has a new tone for it each time, a new velvet amorous voice and insinuating fingers stroking up and down Ryan's thighs.

An almost childishly drawn-out _I lo-ove you._

 _Fuck, Ryan, I love you_ panted between strokes of his dick.

The “you're late and I've been waiting outside your apartment for two hours surprise attack”, during which he repeats _you're a fucking idiot_ too many times to mean it.

An insecure _blow me?_ with Ryan's come still wet on his lips.

 

He never calls Ryan and he never picks up his phone – he texts images of potted plants on what must be a balcony. That or late snapshots of half a leg and some sheets and he's saying “I wish you were here” even if he never ever stays over because neither of them enjoy the strange arrangement of lying in bed after sex. There's the cuddling, the elusive “afterglow” – which is indeed strange because Brendon _does_ seem to glow; a faint golden sheen surrounds him in the moonlight that has never been there when the beams of light strike only Ryan's sheets.

It freaks Ryan out how peaceful he looks lying there, so either he or Brendon makes up an excuse for why they can't sleep together and have breakfast – _I have a paper to hand in, I have a sick aunt to visit, I'm a fucking idiot. Really._

Never does Brendon invite Ryan home to his apartment, even though they live in almost the same building. Ryan's roof is the best spot for star-gazing, Brendon says, so they do that a lot; sit on the roof and kiss until their lips numb and Brendon's dark eyes outshine the sky and the real stars barely matter.

 

 

**(cashmere)**

 

 

It is a few days before Christmas, when the weather bites at ruddy cheeks and snow covers every ledge and rooftop, turning the city into a frosty kingdom full of pit traps and icicles that threaten to spear your eye if you should happen to cast a glance upward.

This is where the ice begins to crack underneath them.

 

Brendon is waiting at Ryan's door at five in the afternoon. He sits cross-legged, leaning against the frame and tends to a glitzy shopping bag from the department store in his arms. When he hears footsteps – Ryan's – coming up the stairs, he looks up and brightens like a puppy whose owner returns from a day of work.

Ryan drops his grocery bag to the floor and fishes out the keys from his inner pocket. “How long have you been there?”

“Not that long.” He's looking at the floor while he says it. Liar.

Ryan shrugs it off and offers him a hand. “Come inside”

They enter and Brendon tugs something from his department store bag. A garland of Christmas lights, it turns out to be. “Look, they were on sale. Figured you needed something to dress up the place.”

Ryan laughs. “That's nice; hang 'em up somewhere.” He finds a roll of duct tape in the bottom kitchen drawer and tosses it to Brendon, who catches it easily. One end of the garland is stuck between his teeth, the other drags along the floor. He kneels on the same stool Ryan once used to climb onto the roof, then begins to tape the garland along the window and the wall.

“It'll be a symbol of how we met or whatever. Or just distract guests from your window that doesn't match the others.”

At the mention of the guests he never sees, Ryan's laughter dies in his throat and climbs back into his stomach where the acid devours it.

 _Never mind_ _that_ , he tells himself. Next year people will visit him all the time. He can host a party for some of the people he talks to in the canteen. Used to talk to. Used to address when they dropped a pencil or something. The people who _don't_ look at him weirdly when he sits alone. Or invite the neighbor, Jon, over to dinner. But for now Ryan is stashing away his food. Fresh vegetables for once, orange juice, a loaf of bread. The pasta in his cupboards leaves a bad taste in his mouth no matter how much ketchup he pours on his plate. Possibly because it's gone bad, possibly because he associates it with insomnia and unfinished projects and leaving a doctor's appointment with his pockets full of psychoactive drugs.

He is stashing away his proof that he is bettering, and he wants to take his time and nurture it, cradle the loaf in his arms or lift it above his head like a trophy of victory. He is better; not yet good but halfway there. Good without the d. Goo. But before he can close his eyes and lean against a fridge that has not been stocked in weeks, Brendon hands him a present. Square and golden with a tag from the nearby department store on it. Ryan reaches for it with shaky hands.

“What is this?”

“Early Christmas present,” Brendon says in the same tone as if he was talking about the weather. But this isn't just a Christmas present; the receipt has fallen out on the floor and shows 478 dollars. Either this is a fucking block of gold or... no, it has to be a block of gold.

With the same shaky hands Ryan unwraps it. He doesn't dare look at it until he feels the knitted fabric under his fingers. When he lowers his gaze, it meets shimmering glistening knitwear unfolding like silk between his hands. It's a fucking gold sweater.

They are college students and Brendon has just handed him a sweater worth almost 500 dollars. Ryan tries to count all the loaves of bread he could have bought for those money. He reaches 130 before Brendon pokes him in the arm, asks Ryan if he likes the present.

“Do you like it?”

“What... how did you afford this?”

The tag on the sweater reads _Cashmere. Do not tumble_ _dry_ _. Handle with care_.

Ryan, hesitating: “This is too much, Bren. I can't accept this. I don't even have a gift for you.”

Brendon frowns and plumps down on the kitchen stool, head in his hands. “What, you can't accept me? You don't want me to give you presents?”

“That's not –”

He sighs. “I knew I should've just gotten you the Christmas lights. Whatever.” He turns away from the window and into the kitchen. He might be about to start a fight or cause a scene or storm out, but instead he drops the subject so swiftly, Ryan doesn't hear it land. Just thrown into a black hole in the universe somewhere. “Can we go out?” Brendon asks. He toys with a broken light on the garland. “Somewhere fun?”

This is good, this is okay. Push away the subject until tomorrow, or better yet: never ever talk about it. They'll lay intertwined in Ryan's bed and talk about stars and about which _Radiohead_ album is the worst, right before Brendon slips out from under the covers and says he has a paper due. Never what it's about, just that he needs to finish it. He'll leave and Ryan can put the sweater in place where he never ever has to look at it again. Brendon leaves; Ryan gets his peace, his loneliness, although it comforts him less than before. No longer a security blanket, just a too-warm, woolen, itchy plaid.

“Somewhere fun, okay,” Ryan says and tries to think of someplace that doesn't drain him of all his energy. The graveyard, six feet under. The roof. Anywhere that Brendon isn't. Anywhere that he is.

“Let's go _clubbing,_ ” Brendon's eyes are shining like the Christmas lights; he's clutching Ryan's hands and he's too fucking Happy; it can't be real.

Ryan ignores the pile of cashmere sweater at his feet. Says, “okay.”

 

A queue of people snakes itself from the entrance; it moves quickly but remains the same length. People flock like sheep outside this particular club, which isn't even that big. Its name references a Madonna song that first rose to popularity in the eighties, but the light in the “S” has gone out and the name of the club now reads “Lucky tar.” Brendon's fingers are playing melodies on the small of Ryan's back; he's whistling under his breath and saying “lets do drugs and fuck in the bathroom.” He's clearly never done either.

 

The club entrance turns out to be a time machine that has flung them back to the eighties. The floor is vinyl, the bar too chunky and the wall art consists of ninety percent Warhol reproductions. A disturbing amount of people show off shoulder pads and glitter blazers. They might be about to start a conga line, too, or allow some crazy fan to give the bored-looking DJ a break in favor of playing Michael Jackson's collective greatest hits.

Ryan orders two beers at the bar and chugs half of his own. Brendon has skipped off to somewhere, maybe dancing, maybe doing drugs and fucking in the bathroom. Ryan completes most activities in his own company, just not clubbing. People flock around him, shove their elbows into his ribs and hips and slosh their drinks all over him. A woman almost _roars_ “hey Rick,” after which her muscle-tee clad friend stomps on Ryan's toes without apologizing. Rick dives into a too-personal tale of his mate Gabe's conquest of the night. Ryan closes his ears and counts backward from thousand. He reaches 236 before Brendon returns with a sly grin on his face and a tiny plastic bag poorly hidden in his left palm.

“That was almost too easy,” he breathes into Ryan's ear and slips Ryan the bag with one pill left in it. A faint shade of pastel lingers on his front teeth, scraped off by a childlike eagerness to stuff himself full of chemicals.

Yes, it's _easy, eez-_ ee _,_ _Easy E_ , and while it's Brendon's first time, that is not the case for Ryan. Not his first, maybe his last. Ryan is wondering, has Brendon never been to a college party? Is this his first time out, and if so from where? He says he's from an overly sheltered home, but the next day he says his parents are dead, the next that he loves them and hopes to see them soon.

As the pill dissolves on Ryan's tongue, he turns drowsy, quite the opposite effect of what the ecstasy claims it has. Maybe it's the combination of meds counteracting each other, in which case, if he keeps popping pills, they might align the imbalances of his psyche and, gasp, cure him.

 

When the clock strikes midnight, Brendon decides to buy shots for the whole bar, and while the club is small, more people than Ryan can count are crowding the dancefloor and his personal space. They hoot and scream and pat Brendon on the back and the head until his eyes flash and he looks simultaneously proud and terrified. His right hand seeks solace between Ryan's fingers.

“Put it on my tab,” he calls to the bartender, who nods, but Brendon has no tab, and when Ryan closes his eyes he sees his own kitchen table where Brendon's wallet enthrones on an empty pizza tray. If Brendon tries to push the bill on _him_ he's out of here, and he's about to leave when he steps on the toes of someone behind him.

“Hey, watch it,” says the guy named Rick, whose hand is so far up his friend's blouse, the finger-tips peek out from her cleavage.

“We all are,” Brendon scoffs, nods his head in the direction of the girl, whose name-necklace reads Susan. “But not everyone is as down with public sex as you.”

For a moment people stare, then they start chatting and cheering and betting on who'd win in a fight. “You telling me I can't show my girlfriend I love her?”

Ryan stares at his feet and prays that Brendon lets it go, but of course he doesn't.

“I don't care if you love her, just don't titty-fuck her in a public place. It's not that difficult to comprehend.”

Not that many people are dancing any longer. Even if they are, they stare at the scene over the shoulders; the scene has caught the attention of two guards, but even they seem interested.

Rick's arms ripple and bulge under the strobe lights. They're twice the size of Ryan's thighs; Rick's hands are even more massive. Susan, the woman, almost disappears when he wraps an arm around her. His nose has already been broken once, his close-cropped hair reveals a scar that runs parallel with his bull neck. “And what about you and your princess boyfriend here? You think I wanna see that? What, did your daddy touch you in the wrong places?”

Something not strobe lights flashes in Brendon eyes; danger, something bad will happen, and everyone but Rick senses it.

“Rick, babe, let it go,” says Susan. She shoots Ryan an apologetic look, mouths _sorry_. “We'll go somewhere else.”

“Use protection, will you? Wouldn't want to pollute the world with your genes,” Brendon spits, right in Rick's face.

Rick looks so surprised, he has no time to guard himself from the glob of saliva that flies toward his face with the speed and precision of a rocket missile.

Ryan is about to reach out for Brendon's hand, when Brendon's arm swings and collides with his own saliva on Rick's nose. Something crunches, wet and filthy, before Rick responds. He gets in a punch to Brendon's left eye before he smashes Brendon's head down on the bar disk. Brendon's mouth flies open and his eyes shut when Rick's fingers grip his hair even tighter and begins playing basketball with his skull. Ryan wants to intervene, but he also wants to laugh at the situation, because Brendon is so small and fragile compared to this gorilla of a man, but at the same time he wants to cry because Brendon is so small and fragile compared to this gorilla of a man.

One of the guards taps Ryan on the shoulder with his left hand, gestures for him to step aside. With the right he yanks Brendon away from Rick, so hard that Brendon knocks his head back into a wall and you can practically see the cartoon birds fluttering above his head in a feathery halo.

“Get out,” he says to them both, no mercy. His voice could freeze a toe off. “And don't come here again until you can pay for your drinks with a retirement benefit.”

Rick and his girlfriend shuffle off to the exit. Brendon wobbles when the guard lets go, then grabs Ryan's arm to steady himself. “Wha'time's it?” he slurs “I gotta get home, I have an appointment early... I need my bed. Call me a cab.”

They bump into grinding strangers, drunk strangers, people who've been in the club for so long that they almost aren't strangers, a puddle of pee on the floor, finally the exit and past the never-ending queue-snake that hisses at the two wobbling people clinging to each other like saran wrap, or like a better metaphor Ryan could concoct when sober.

“What the hell was that about? He wasn't even bothering us until you started talking shit.”

No reply comes.

A snowflake flies into Ryan's eye, then another and another until the air is freckled with white dots. Brendon bounces back and forth on the balls of his feet in his vomit-stained sneakers. He tries to catch the flakes with his tongue while Ryan dials up the taxi company. His fingers tremble either from the cold or the drugs. The clock on his phone shows a little past one in the morning. This is the shittiest he's ever felt this early in his life.

The taxi rolls up, Ryan aids Brendon inside, and the driver asks where to.

Brendon is drooling on Ryan's shoulder. “Mmm,” he half-snores in response to the driver. To Ryan he says, “can I sleep it out at your place?”

“No, you can't. Get some sleep.”

Ryan has an exam the following morning, he says. He gives the cab driver Brendon's address and tells him to drop him off last so he can pay for them both. He'll give back Brendon his wallet later.

“I love you.”

Ryan meets the driver's eyes in the rearview mirror. The man quirks an eyebrow and Ryan wants to snarl “it's none of your business,” but instead feels himself not knowing whether to shake his head or nod it. Brendon's string of drool lands on the leather seat and Ryan wipes it off on Brendon's shirt. He's so far gone, he doesn't even notice.

“Drugs?”

“I'm not sure anymore,” Ryan answers. The driver nods, though he can't possibly understand this particular circumstance. Then again, half his job is pretending to listen and understand the troubles that weigh down the shoulders of his customers. Ryan thinks he should quit his therapy sessions and just drive around in cabs.

 

Brendon sleeps in his own apartment. Ryan lies in an empty bed that's never felt this cold and thinks, this isn't even a shitty metaphor, it's just the inevitable truth. He thinks and he thinks and he lives in his own head too much of the time.

 

 

**(crazy)**

 

 

Ryan, clutching Brendon's wallet between his hands, trips down five flights of stairs and up another three before he stands in front of apartment 32F and reads the sign on the door:

 

_Greta Salpeter_

 

He knocks on it. The bell chimes softly, and it takes far too long for the inhabitant to open. Ryan's stomach knots and undoes itself during the forty three seconds it takes before a blonde woman opens the door, wearing a pinstriped apron and her hair in a bun. Flour dusts her clothes and her cheeks.

“Does Brendon live here?” Ryan asks although he already knows the answer.

She shakes her head. “Not anymore.”

A wave of relief washes over him. Why didn't Brendon just tell Ryan that he moved out? “Oh. When did he move?”

She speculates, her gaze fixed on the ceiling as if trying to count back a long time. “I think he moved out in September?”

So before he knew Ryan. Okay.

“Why? What do you want with him?” She squints, hasn't realized until now that Ryan might be coming to cash in laundered money, that Brendon might be in trouble or involved with the wrong kind of people. To soothe her, Ryan lifts up the department store bag.

“I just wanted to return this sweater.” He really can't keep it. “And his wallet.”

“Well, he doesn't live here. I don't know where he lives.” She offers Ryan a box of fresh Christmas cookies, which he politely declines.

“Do you not knowing anything about him at all? He told me he lives here. But he doesn't, never have, so why's he lying to me?”

She tilts her head to her shoulder, looks at him with a good dose of pity in her eyes. There's something she isn't telling him. Something big, something important. “I don't know. He never lied to me.”

“What about college,” Ryan blurts out when the door begins to creak closed. Greta's eyes peer out at him through the gap, too serious.

“What do you mean?”

“Do you think he lives at campus? With a classmate or something?”

She shakes her head. “He doesn't go to college. Honestly, how well do you even know him?”

Ryan asks himself the same.

 

...

 

Later, when Ryan has bitten his nails down too far for their own good, he wishes he had the cookies to gnaw at instead. He counts the minutes until the hour at which Brendon usually arrives. And when he does, he looks happy, obliviously so. The liar.

“You don't live here.”

Brendon's smile freezes on his face. “D-do you want me to? To live with you, I mean.”

“I mean in the building. A woman opened the door to your apartment.”

Now the smile is gone.

“She's my room-mate,” Brendon ~~says~~ lies.

“I know she isn't. What aren't you telling me?”

Brendon begins unpacking groceries. He doesn't even live here and he's unpacking the fucking groceries. “What do you want for dinner?” he asks, but fuck dinner, fuck every meal they'll ever eat together unless Brendon doesn't spit some truth right fucking now. Ryan slams a bony hand down on the bag of string cheese. Brendon startles and drops the orange juice. The lid falls off; juice pools in an orange sea on the kitchen tiles.

“Tell me,” Ryan demands. He sounds so desperate, hates himself for it, the way he _begs_. He clears his throat. “You don't live where you say you do, you never sleep over, but you eat my food and take up my time. You don't study Astronomy; you don't even go to college at all. Your parents are dead, then they aren't. Who the hell are you?”

Brendon looks at the floor, then begins wiping up the spilled juice. “I take my college classes over the internet.”

With a deep sigh, Ryan leans against the counter. “That's not something to be ashamed of. Why didn't you just tell me?” _And why didn't you tell me anything else?_

After all the times he has let Brendon in on sleepless night and passing out in a public toilet because he forgot to eat and drink for so long, the nausea overpowered him. Ryan lay bare his entire personality to the guy in front of him, and now the jerk's just standing there, too proud to admit he has flaws of his own.

“What's it matter anyway?” Brendon asks. “Just because I'm your boyfriend doesn't mean I have to tell you everything about me.”

Ryan inhales to gather courage for his next sentence. This cannot be undone.

“Then you're not my boyfriend. Not anymore.”

“But I don't understand...” Brendon's grip tightens on wet the towel in his hands. The juice is dripping down.

“Understand what? That I'd rather be alone than with someone who can't function in a relationship and lies to me and gets me thrown out of bars? What the fuck is wrong with you? Are you too self-absorbed to see beyond your own ego?”

“So you're breaking up with me?”

“Unless you give me a good reason for why you've been lying to me about every aspect of your life, then, yeah, I am.” The words hurt to say; they scratch all the way up Ryan's throat like barbed wire vomit.

Brendon is chewing his bottom lip, staring blankly at Ryan.

“Why were you up on that roof in the first place if you don't live in the building?”

“Stars,” Brendon says. He looks at the floor now. “I told you.”

“Please, you can look at them all over the town. Why'd you pick this place? Is it because it's the highest building in the town, because it's privately owned and you can't just trespass like that, or – were you _stalking_ me?”

“No, no, I just wanted to look at them. The stars. I like looking at them.” He keeps looking at the floor and the towel. Something drips from his face and into the pool of orange juice at their feet.

Ryan squeezes his own temples. They're going in the circles, the same arguments looped around Brendon's transparent excuses. And now he's crying, too. Maybe it's a manipulative trick or maybe he's genuinely weeping like a toddler, but Ryan _can't_ handle it, “I can't do this,” he says. His voice is shaking. “I'm done with all your fucking bullshit. Please leave.”

When Brendon just stands as if nailed to the floor, Ryan shoves him gently toward the door, then a little less gently when Brendon remains in the same position, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet.

“You can't just throw me out,” Brendon begs. “Please don't throw me out.”

“I am,” Ryan says. Again the barbed wire scratches his tongue and the roof of his mouth. He might be bleeding. It certainly feels like something is broken inside of him. Stomach ripped to pieces, soaking his organs in hydrochloric acid. A punctured lung causes his wheezing breathing. Someone, maybe even himself, has smashed his heart to pieces with a sledgehammer. “Get out, go home to wherever you live. You can live on the street for all I care.”

Brendon leaves.

The door slams behind him and Ryan's apartment is just as silent as before he came along.

 

 

 **(c** **ontact** **)**

 

 

It's the day of Christmas Eve, the 24th, and Ryan is wandering aimlessly around the streets, looking at store windows and half-freezing his toes off. His boots aren't lined enough for these degrees. Due to the cold he's flossy, worn, and fragile. Where the hell does Brendon live?

A homeless person leans against the insides of a porch. At first Ryan thinks it's just an old pile of clothes, but when they turn to shield themselves from the wind that sweeps powder-snow into the alley, the fabric turn out to be a nasty checkered plaid. They turn fully over, turn out to be a woman about Ryan's age or a bit older; you can't tell because the weather has roughened her features. It's as if she's been lined up with coal, her face is that caked with soil. Her dark lips are cracked in several places to reveal sores, and the ebony has a foreign blue shade to it. Ryan smells the despair and piss that emanates from her even in the cold. He feels the weight of the bagged sweater tugging at his fingers. Despite being made of cashmere, it itches his skin and feels so wrong to touch or even look at. Maybe he's just being selfish by giving it to her, but he crouches anyway, slowly, so as not to appear a threat.

“Here.” Ryan squats next to the woman. “I bet you're cold and I know this isn't much, but I don't want it and you need it more than me.”

She frowns. Her eyes, crinkled by mistrust and fear, are a rich chocolate brown the same color as Brendon's, but hers are clouded by sleep. Maybe she was a lawyer before she lost her job. Ryan wonders if she has a kid, how long she's been out here. Something tugs at his heart, then the rest of his muscles, a strange desire to hug this stranger. That would be inappropriate. A hug isn't what she needs; she needs a roof over her head and an hour long bath. Neither is something Ryan can provide. Instead he pulls the sweater from the bag, then hands it to her.

“You can't eat gold,” she says. Her voice is weak. “You better keep that fancy shirt to yourself.”

Right. The sweater is hardly warm enough to help her in this weather. Ryan still has Brendon's wallet in the bag and fishes it up. Flips through a thick bundle of bills that contains at least a thousand dollars in cash. A fear sparks in him that she might assault him, but the woman is so weak, she has closed her eyes and is panting shallowly.

“Hey.” He nudges her. “Take this instead. You can keep the sweater, too.”

“Thank you,” the homeless says. And suddenly looks grateful now that she has enough to survive the night in a hostel. Her eyes slip shut again; she mumbles something about _Matilda_.

“Merry Christmas,” he replies to her sleeping form. It's not enough, he knows this, and he leaves the alley and the woman without feeling like a good person.

 

...

 

Ryan is watching television alone, waiting for Disney's Christmas classics to appear on the screen of his laptop. The news would never cover it, let alone on Christmas eve, but at half past six in the evening, a homeless woman draws a matchstick to light her last, damp cigarette. Before she can take a drag, the breath leaves her airways and never returns. Between her belongings, which will be mugged from her corpse during the holidays, is a hideous cashmere sweater glittering with snow and in-woven golden threads, at least twelve hundred in very cold cash, and a picture of her daughter, who is working overtime at the hospital this year.

 

Ryan loses consciousness and so does his father. At eleven thirty nine George Ross slams his head into yet another bar disk and falls off his high stool to much applause and amusement on behalf of the other guests at the pub. A marathon of _Home Alone_ is showing in between clips of an old Madrid versus Arsenal soccer game.

 

Ryan is falling asleep to Mickey Mouse, and a little girl and her mother finds out that the leukemia is back, terminal this time.

 

Ryan is dreaming about candy canes and unwrapping a pair of socks his father bought him. Brendon Urie is having a nightmare. Fifteen years have passed, and still the moment his parents are annihilated loops over and over in his mind in his sleep. For three days he hasn't slept, which isn't a record, but they pump him full of medication so he _sleeps_. Like a stone. The pills taste of bitter chemicals that can't erase the dust and blood in his mouth. He hears bone crunching, not his own. The light is so blinding even through the debris that cover his small body. Rubble, cement-dust and tremendous parts of the roof. Through all the noise and violent destruction, through all the primal death screams, he hears his mother call half his name before her voices dies out like a matchstick. His father makes no sound; the star has already reduced him to a lump of blood and tissue, thwarted into the ground.

Someone is screaming “God can't save you” and because Brendon is asleep, he doesn't know that the voice is coming from himself. He tries his best to shut it up; he curls up against the wall; slams his head against it; maybe he can rattle everything out of his head this way. But the voice screams over and over again until his throat is raw and nothing but a gurgling comes out, because God doesn't save anyone because God doesn't exist.

Everyone is used to this; it's the same nightmare that happens every night. Except for the last noise that leaves Brendon: a hoarse, barely audible “Ryan?”, which no one has heard before. A nurse takes note and leaves the room to make a call.

 

...

 

Ryan knows nothing of any of this. He is asleep on his couch with an empty Chinese take-away carton in his lap. A little past midnight his phone rings. Luckily he has placed it under himself, so its vibrations jolt him awake and capable of answering.

“Ryan,” he replies. He doesn't recognize the number.

“Hi, Ryan, this is Matilda Montgomery from Parkview Memorial Hospital. Sorry to bother you at Christmas Eve. Can we talk for a moment?”

“Sure.”

“One of our patients in the psychiatric ward – Brendon Urie – has added you as his primary contact person. He insisted we called you; my apologies. I know it's Christmas eve and you are probably with your family, but it was worth a shot.”

Time seems to slow as this information seeps into Ryan's mind. Then he considers lying, saying “yes, I am with my family. I'll call you back later,” and never doing it.

The woman continues: “He wants to see you. The nightmares are rough on him during the holidays, because of the trauma associated with the accident.”

“What do you mean?”

There is a pause in the other end of the connection.

“You know he suffers from post traumatic stress disorder, right? PTSD?”

Everything stills. Time, Ryan's pulse and the nurse, Matilda's, voice on the phone. There seems to be nothing but a faint whooshing sound, like when you put your ear to a conch and hear the ocean.

“And he's hospitalized? For how long?”

“I honestly thought you knew this, what with you being his emergency contact person and all.” She sounds so confused, Ryan feels the urge to comfort her, but he's upside down, compressed in a vacuum of this new information.

“If you can, you better come down here.” She gives him the address and Ryan writes it down on a piece of paper with scraggly letters that fall off the page when his hand meets the ledge of the sofa.

 

The heavens are whipping snow onto his windshield. He picked up the car at the club yesterday. The scarf Brendon borrowed still lies in passenger seat. Ryan drives with shaky hands and eyes that don't function properly because visages of Brendon keeps popping up on his cornea. Due to the slippery roads, he almost crashes the car four times before it skids to a slushy halt outside Parkview Memorial's mental asylum, or whatever you're supposed to call these places nowadays. The dark gray walls and square, illuminated windows appears just like an ordinary office building, but the truth is you can't open them and there are a lot more security cameras than in an office building.

Ryan pops open the front door with one elbow and shakes the snow out of his eyes and hair. Under his jacket he has the scarf, a purple woolen thing that Ryan is aware smells like Brendon smells, but right now he can't remember anything about the scent. He keeps imagining Brendon in one of those hideous mint green hospital gowns, with tubes in his arms. Even though his subconscious is well aware that the patients in a psychiatric ward are dressed in everyday clothes and the whole straight-jacket thing isn't the custom outfit, he still keeps glancing around to ascertain no one's coming to harass him.

 

But this isn't the Brendon he thought he knew. Happy people aren't psych patients, that's Common Knowledge. There are people who are happy, and then there are people who are Happy. Brendon was Happy with a capital H so large, you had to tilt your head back to see the top of it, or whatever.

Still the patients are nowhere to be seen. A dark-skinned woman with the id-tag _Montgomery_ , _Matilda_ appears from an open office and shakes his hand.

Ryan stammers his own name and purpose to the woman. She leads him into the a tea-kitchen area of the hospital. It's small, must be reserved for the staff.

“Good, you're here. Hope your family wasn't too upset at you leaving. It's very late, and we don't usually allow visitors at this hour, but because it's Christmas and there aren't many patients or staff here, we made an exception.”

“It's not a problem.” Ryan doesn't want to tell her that the stain on his shirt is sweet-and-sour sauce from his takeaway Christmas dinner. She probably misses her own family, and they probably miss her from around their dinner table. Maybe she doesn't celebrate Christmas. _Maybe you should focus on why you're here,_ he scolds himself.

“Brendon's unconscious right now. We had to give him a pill to relax him. He was slamming his head into the wall in his sleep.”

Ryan's stomach curdles like sour milk. He thinks of Brendon bruised and battered after his fight with that guy at the bar.

“Look, I really hadn't thought I ought to do this, but since you don't – how much do you know anyway?”

“I know...” Ryan swallows. “We'd known each other for approximately two months. He was vague about his family. Never let me see where he lived. Lied to me.”

Matilda offers him a cup of coffee. “Milk or sugar?”

Ryan shakes his head. The fluorescent lights reflect in the surface of the coffee. It's pitch black, as is the sky outside. The ward is silent. No one is screaming. No one is running around screaming “the voices told me to do it, the voices told me to do it.” In fact the only noise is Matilda's fast-scribbling pen on paper.

“He says you two were dating, is that correct?”

“Uh, yes. We were. I broke up with him a few days ago.”

She notes this on her pad. “Why?”

Ryan squirms in his (mint green) plastic chair. It feels ridiculous to say. He never would've kicked Brendon out like that if he – “I got tired of all his bullshit. That's what I said: “I'm done with your fucking bullshit”. Nice of me, huh?”

She neither agrees nor dismisses his statement. “Can you tell me about your relationship?”

“Are you his shri– I mean, psychiatrist?”

“No, I'm a nurse. The doctors aren't working here on Christmas eve. It's just me, Jonathan and the patients. Tell me about you two.”

Ryan's mouth is a decrepit cemetery gate. A small “it started when he fell through my window” slips out and breaks one of the bars, then comes the “and I had to drive him to the hospital,” and the “he owed me money” turns into “he said he loved me all the time, very quickly into our relationship, too, and then he bought me a sweater and got all upset because I thought it was too expensive a gift for a two-month fling.”

“So he was more invested in you than you were in him?”

Ryan fidgets with the handle on the coffee cup. He expects there to be a magical Movie Moment where she'll say it for him, say “you really must love him” in that Supporting Character Voice With Sweet, Slightly Upbeat Piano Music Playing To Show That A Grand Romantic Gesture Is About To Occur.

She clears her throat. “You have to answer me; I can't read your thoughts.”

It cracks the gates completely, like a sickly sweet confession flood “Fine, I loved him. Love him. Whatever.” He adds a quick “I think, I did. Two months, really, how much can you really learn about a person in such a short time?” It sounds so fake. Then again, so much of what Brendon told him were lies. Who knows what else he lied about?

Matilda says nothing, just jots down Ryan's words on her pad. Then she tells him about Bipolar Disorder and how it affects intimate relationships. That it often walks hand in hand with the stress disorder, that the people who suffer from it are particularly vulnerable. That sometimes they don't know how to function properly in relationships, especially if their trauma relates to abuse or bad relations. They, They, They. She's talking about Brendon, only Brendon matters, why not grace the air with his name?

Ryan sits still and listens and thinks about Brendon breathing on his neck, biting, leaving behind wet blossom-hickeys and whispering “Ryan, you're a Christmas Miracle, do you know that?” Then the same Brendon is a few yards away in his room, in a mental hospital. _Fuck, it's just wrong on so many levels._

“You say you were together for two months – how has his behavior been in this time?”

Ryan wets his lips. It feels too private to give away all these details to a complete stranger. To have doctors and psychologist and whatstheirfaces probe and poke at any part of Brendon; it just seems wrong. There is no precise word or flowery metaphor for it. “Um, he was kind of erratic, almost like he was too happy sometimes. But I – I'm not that happy. So I thought I'd just forgotten how normal people are happy.”

She catches his drift. But these days, who hasn't got a depression? Who isn't popping pills to make it through their nine to five jobs and demanding kids and spouses without sex-drives. Haha, Ryan thinks, exactly like it's spelled. Ha-Ha. Ha-Ha-Happy.

That's when she tells him about The Triggering Incident. About Brendon's parents who were happily married and planning to raise more children in a Mormon community. His mother was six months pregnant when she died.

“Do you recall that time, fifteen years ago, what were you, ten?”

“Eight,” Ryan corrects her.

“Yes, when the star fell down? Or, fell down, that's kind of mild to put it. _Part_ of a star from the Carina constellation crashed. It was just a fraction of it, but that fraction annihilated a school in Nevada – I think it was right outside Vegas, actually. Another part of the star crashed on top of five casinos. Respectively nine and twenty one people died, several dozens were wounded.”

“I remember that,” Ryan exclaims. “That was my school, that happened to my school.”

And suddenly he recalls the day his mom disappeared – not just the disappearance part, but all of it: the kid in the tree house reading comic books, talking about lasagna and when his parents would come back for him. He recalls that he was wearing a striped t-shirt and the other kid was wearing a red one.

Her eyes widen. “Really? What a coincidence. Because that crash killed Brendon's parents. He was with them when it happened, broke a leg and an arm but thankfully nothing more. But the trauma's been bad. There weren't enough opportunities or offers to counsel a kid that young. And so many people needed counseling, that there weren't enough time and care for everyone. It doesn't help that the social securities tossed him around between various family members until he turned seventeen and moved to live on his own. You know, I respect the right to believe in whatever you want, but to me it seems like his family was part of some kinda lunatic sect.”

“But –”

“He is... prone to making rash decisions. He's impulsive and self-destructive and, well, he does a lot of stupid shit, if I may put it so bluntly. About two months ago, he tried to kill himself by jumping from a roof. He never made it down, though. He fell through a window in one of the roof-apartments instead, thank God. He doesn't take care of himself, and, look, I understand that this is news to you. A shock, even. And if you decide that you don't want part of it, I completely understand that, too. You can leave now and I'll tell him we couldn't reach you. We're professionals after all; we're paid to help people like him.”

“You mean crazy people?”

Matilda frowns, “no –”, but the entry of another nurse, male this time, interrupts her.

“Is this him?” the man asks. His face is familiar – the beard in particular – and when Ryan's eyes fall on the identification badge, he reads the name, _Walker, Jonathan._ Jon Walker. The guy who lives next to him.

He looks at Ryan without recognizing him. “Come with me,” he says. Ryan leaves the chair and cold coffee behind. His legs threaten to give out under him and he scolds them, scolds himself. They shake and they rattle, knocking his knees together and causing him to trip over his own shoe laces during all the twenty five yards to Brendon's room, which Jon unlocks with a key-card.

 

They're standing next to each other, looking at Brendon's sleeping body, when Ryan blurts out “We're neighbors.”

“What, you and him?”

A flush creeps up Ryan's neck and settles on his face. He looks stiffly at Brendon, not the nurse next to him. “No, you and me. I live next to a Jon Walker, at least.”

Jon chuckles low in his throat. “That _is_ a coincidence.” The way he says it makes it sound like he knows all too well; that it isn't a coincidence at all. In the next heartbeat: “Do you want to go home for the night? It's Christmas day tomorrow after all. We can call you if he wakes up calm enough to see you.”

Ryan surprises himself by saying “I don't want to leave him alone.” Jon looks unfazed. “I can deal with him; I can deal with the crazy.”

“He doesn't like it when you call him that, by the way.”

“I know. But he can't hear us, can he?”

“I can hear you,” Brendon mumbles. “Assholes.” His lips barely move, but both Ryan and Jon startle at the sound.

Jon crouches to feel Brendon's forehead. “Brendon? Are you awake?”

The low snore that escapes Brendon is a tattle-tale: no, he is not.

 

Jon and Matilda allow Ryan to wait in the room. They keep the door unlocked, in case Ryan has to use the bathroom. It's only because it's Christmas, they say. When it's time to wake up the other patients, Ryan can't wander around in the hall or brew coffee in the kitchen; he must politely wait for Brendon to awaken in his room.

It's not that looking at Brendon is exciting or interesting, but the room is full of junk and trinkets. Ryan sits in a weirdly bowl-shaped chair with his legs up on the writing desk next to a framed photo of two people who look remarkably like Brendon. His dad has the same nose, his mom the same beaming smile. They look happy. And alive.

Next to the family portrait is a picture of a dog. There is no dog in the room; Ryan can't figure out whose dog that is, except that it probably isn't Rick and Susan's from the club, nor is it the major's sweet li'l pup. That leaves two local canines out of the equation. And behind the dog-photo, in a knocked over heart-shaped frame, is a blurry picture of Ryan stuffing a hotdog in his mouth and holding up a hand because he hates pictures of himself and thinks he can prevent the photograph from being taken with such a weak hand gesture. Brendon was running around with a disposable camera, taking pictures all day. So where are the rest?

On the walls there are five year old posters of bands and mediocre movies. In the chair underneath him, Ryan finds a iPod whose surface is no longer shiny, but looks like a cat's toy. Ryan scrolls through it, nods. Some of the albums he introduced to Brendon can be found among _Blink-182, Frank Sinatra, Radiohead, Wu-Tang Clan_. Ryan almost laughs out loud. The guy has a pretty whack taste; Ryan already knows this, but he forgot while being pissed off at Brendon lying to him.

When he has browsed the room for long enough, he returns his gaze to Brendon, who has opened his eyes and is staring straight at Ryan. He still has a black eye from the fight, not to mention two gigantic bumps in his head from respectively the bar-fight and his acclaimed head-wall-slamming.

“I think I told you something that wasn't true,” he says, voice small. “I think I'm pretty fucking crazy.”

Ryan places the iPod on the table. “You're not crazy. But I'd kind of like it if you stopped lying to me.”

“Didn't want you to think I was some kind of mental freak. I thought I'd get out soon enough that I would never have to tell you and then all of a sudden I was in love with you and it felt too late to come out of the closet as being a fucking nut-case.”

Ryan doesn't know what to say. Maybe he should have just left. He sits down on Brendon's bed instead. The covers smell faintly of vinegar.

“Is this the point where you expect me to blurt out with all the shit in my life that's landed me here? 'Cause I'm not ready for that. And if you're not ready for that either, you should probably leave.” Brendon scratches at his hospital-provided blanket.

“I don't expect anything from you,” Ryan says. He tugs Brendon's hand away from the loose thread and squeezes it. “But whatever it is, I can deal with it. I promise.” 


End file.
